Much like her role in Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts was engaged to multiple men before finally settling down with the love of her life. The 54-year-old actress has enjoyed a long marriage with her husband, Danny Moder, but before meeting him, Roberts had indulged in several high-profile romances, including Liam Neeson and Kiefer Sutherland.
Roberts was first linked with Neeson back in 1987 but after a year she realized they weren’t meant to be, as per Closer Weekly. After establishing a name in the acting industry, then went on to date Dylan McDermott and even got engaged to him. But she called it quits and became engaged to Kiefer Sutherland a few years later but that ended too.
After two failed engagements, Roberts decided to settle down with musician and actor Lyle Lovett. They tied the knot in 1993, but their marriage ended in divorce in1995. After dating a few more actors, she met Danny Moder while working on the sets of The Mexican. Moder, unlike her previous partners, was not famous but that did not bother the actress.
There was one problem though, Moder was still married to his first wife Vera Steimberg when he met the Pretty Woman star. However, he ended his marriage soon and went on to have a beautiful relationship with Roberts. They exchanged marital vows in June 2002 and welcomed three children: twins Phinnaeus and Hazel and son Henry.
While Roberts has chosen to keep details of her love life private, she did open up about how happy her husband makes her. Back in 2018, the actress sat down with Gwyneth Paltrow for her GOOP Podcast and shared, “I think that first kind of real ‘seismic shift’ was meeting Danny, getting married to Danny… that was the first ‘my life will never be the same’ in the most incredible, indescribable way.”
She went on to describe her husband as her “favorite human.” “He truly, to this day, to this minute is just my favorite human … I’m more interested in what he has to say or his point of view just (more) than anybody. Really, we’re so lucky in that way. We just really, really like each other and we just enjoy each other’s company,” she shared.
“We’ve been married for 16 years, we’ve been together for 18 … It just gets deeper, it just gets more complex,” added Roberts. She went on to explain how one never really knows how marriage would work until there’s actually doing it. “… you’re young and you fall in love and go, ‘Yeah, we’re going to get married and we’re going to build a house and will have kids,’ and all these things that we all kind of dream of, but you don’t know if you’re going to like the same couch and you don’t know if he is going to want to get patterned towels.”
“You just don’t know these things until you are right there doing it and we are so fortunate that there is some kind of some explicable harmony to the way we do thing,” she said, noting, “He’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Back in 2020, an insider told Closer Weekly that “(Roberts and Moder) truly feel like soulmates,” adding, “The chemistry between them is crucial. After all this time, Julia still finds Danny incredibly sexy, and he adores her still.” The couple is “committed to staying together for the long haul, whatever it takes,” they shared.
Cover image source: Getty | Photo by David Buchan
